


Help me disappear

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 06:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11098782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: The two times James McGraw had asked Lady Hamilton to help him.





	Help me disappear

**Author's Note:**

> In response to @significanceofmoth's prompt for James McGraw & Miranda Barlow "Help me disappear". Starts off so amusing but ends, well, canonically, I suppose!

It isn’t cowardice to hide from one’s known demons, it simply isn’t! James McGraw has learned this lesson well. Sometimes, to stay and fight is the stupidest choice a man can make. So, he flees, down the candlelit corridors, past liveried men carrying brimming trays and carafes full of wine. Another word, another look, and blood would be spilled all over the fine Persian rugs. Such things are simply not done in polite society.

“Lieutenant!” a bright voice calls him and he turns towards the small library, exposed beyond an open door, with a vision in an emerald dress blocking the entryway. “Always in such a hurry?”

“Hide me,” he blurts out.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Lady Hamilton,” he stammers, realizing how ridiculous he sounds. “There are certain men here who, were I to meet them again, would end up rather worse for wear, but not without consequence to my own career.”

“I see,” Miranda Hamilton smiles and fans herself with languid motions of her elegant white arm.

“Help me disappear,” he all but pleads. It is preposterous and inappropriate. Perhaps it would be even more so had what happened between them in the carriage not happened at all.

“Well, all right,” Miranda laughs and lifts up her voluminous skirts. “There is only one place that I can think of for you to hide, Lieutenant McGraw.”

“Miranda!” he gasps.

“Please, sir, it’s Lady Hamilton: we’re in public!”

James feels himself about to lose his mind.

“Now, get under my skirts, Lieutenant, or you will surely be caught.”

He dives underneath the layers of velvet and petticoats, fully aware that he will never be able to look at a woman wearing such a dress the same way again. He cannot account, for all the ludicrousness of his position, for why he feels so safe there.

***

Like a child, James wants to press his face into Miranda’s petticoats again. To feel that warmth emanating from her body. To know the comfort and shelter of her presence. Her hand is on his shoulder, a soft, anchoring weight, yet he cannot breathe.

“Help me,” he whispers, gasping for air. “Help me disappear.”

Her arms are around his chest, squeezing, insistent that his heart stays put where it is, despite its valiant efforts to burst out. Her cheek is pressed into his shoulder blade and James knows that were he not wearing his military coat, the back of his shirt would be soaked with her tears.

“We will go away from here,” Miranda whispers.

“Yes,” he replies in a hollow voice.

“I will keep you safe,” she speaks through her own tears and it stings. These are the words he should be saying to her.

“No. There is no where in the world we can go where I will be safe,” he responds, picking up one of her hands and pressing a kiss to her knuckles.

“Then we will disappear together,” she says, nails digging into his chest. James sinks into her embrace, vanquished, but still unwilling to let her drag him away from the clutches of certain death. They sink to the floor entwined, like a cannon caught in the rigging.

“I destroyed everything,” he breathes out. “It was all my doing. And now it is forever gone. _Thomas_ is gone. Our lives are gone.”

“Not gone,” she says, pressing her lips to his temple. “Not ever truly gone. For as long as you and I have each other, we will keep it alive and true, if only between the two of us.” He clings to her words like a golden thread. “Come away with me, James. I could not save my husband, let me save you.”

He is beyond saving but he will not speak to her of such things. He rises from the floor, extricating himself from her arms. Of all the luxuries of London, he suspects, he’ll miss Lady Hamilton’s dresses most. For where in the world will he hide from his demons now?


End file.
